In the telecommunications industry, call centers are used to provide customer and operator services for business clients. Traditionally, customers of these business clients place a phone call to a toll-free telephone number to reach a call center customer service agent. They are then served over the phone. Often, because of the limited number of agents at a call center and the large number of calls, a customer's call is placed in a queue until an agent becomes available.
Many customers in the telecommunications industry interact with the Internet and World Wide Web, and use the Web for a variety of business services. This presents a business opportunity to interact with customers who are familiar with browsing the Web, by presenting to the customer a Web site and an opportunity to interact with the telecommunications company. However, the World Wide Web is not an interactive media, and is primarily composed of many static HTML pages at any given Web site.
The customers browsing the Web site may have a need to speak with a customer service agent, either with respect to the Web site and information posted there, or with respect to their transactions with the telecommunications company.
Many companies, including telecommunications companies, maintain call centers to interact with their customers. These call centers may provide order entry clerks for new orders, billing services for resolving problems with invoices, shipments or returns, technical support, and trouble ticketing for customers having a high volume of transactions with the company.
However, given the volume of customer calls, and the company resources available to response to the calls, most calls to the call center are placed on-hold by an ACD (automatic call director), and the initial customer interaction is with an IVR (interactive voice response) unit, which is primarily intended to direct the call to the proper agent, and is not programmed to answer a customer's questions. This frequently leads to aggravated customers who are unable to resolve their concerns in a timely manner.
The only means presently available to contact a company call center agent and not be placed on hold, is to place a telephone call and submit a call-back request via the telephone, or to send an e-mail request to the “web master” of the Web site. Current Web services do not allow call-back requests to be submitted via the Web or other Interactive means.